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Henry King Ketcham (March 14, 1920 – June 1, 2001) was an American cartoonist who created the Dennis the Menace comic strip, writing and drawing it from 1951 to 1994, when he retired from drawing the daily strip and took up painting full-time in his home studio. In 1953, he received the Reuben Award for the strip, which continues today in the hands of other cartoonists.
After World War II, Ketcham settled in Carmel, California, and began work as a freelance cartoonist. He built a two-bedroom redwood house and studio in Carmel Woods. In 1951, he started Dennis the Menace, based on his own four-year-old son Dennis. Ketcham was in his studio in October 1950 when his first wife, Alice, burst into the studio and complained that their four-year-old, Dennis, had wrecked his bedroom instead of napping. "Your son is a menace!" she shouted. Within five months, 16 newspapers began carrying Dennis the Menace. By May 1953, 193 newspapers in the United States and 52 in other countries were carrying the strip to 30 million readers.
By 1955, Ketcham moved from his Carmel cottage to upper Carmel Valley, where he purchased the former Fred Wolferman ranch, only 40 minutes from the Monterey Peninsula.The Spanish adobe home on the Carmel Valley property was designed by architect Hugh W. Comstock with bitudobe brick. On the edge of the orchard was a Victorian ranch house for the foreman and his family, designed by architect Wilson Mizner.
In 1958, Dennis Play Products, Inc., was created by Ketcham to distribute toys, which included the Dennis the Menace Doll, Ruff Dog, and Banshee Ball. Between 1959 and 1964 Dennis the Menace was broadcast on CBS television, based on the Ketcham comic strip. The show was a great success.
In 1970, King Features Syndicate revived Ketcham's wartime strip Half Hitch as a newspaper comic. The strip was published under Ketcham's name, although it was drawn and written by others. The new version of Half Hitch ran until 1975.
In 1977, Ketcham moved back to the United States and settled in Monterey, California, with his third wife, the former Rolande Praepost, whom he had married in 1969, and with whom he had two children, Scott and Dania. Dennis Ketcham served in Vietnam, suffered post-traumatic stress disorder, and had little contact with his father. Ketcham and his son were estranged for much of Dennis's adult life.
In 1990, Ketcham published a memoir titled The Merchant of Dennis the Menace chronicling his career. He retired from drawing the daily panel in 1994, when his former assistants, Marcus Hamilton and Ron Ferdinand, took over. At the time of Ketcham's death, Dennis the Menace was distributed to more than 1,000 newspapers in 48 countries and 19 languages, by King Features Syndicate.
Ketcham spent his last years in retirement at his home in Carmel, California, painting in oil and watercolor. Many of his paintings can be seen in a hospital in nearby Monterey. He died in Carmel on June 1, 2001, at the age of 81. He was survived by his oldest son, Dennis; The Tragic True Story of Dennis the Menace, grunge.com, December 4, 2020 his third wife, Rolande; and their two children, Dania and Scott.
In 2005, Fantagraphics Books started publishing what was to be a complete Dennis by Ketcham from the start of the strip, collecting two years per volume, but the publishing ceased in 2009 with the 1961–1962 volume.
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